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The works of a half-dozen scholars, and the reminiscences and other writings of the players, national and local, who influenced the content and passage of the Federal Reserve Act and the location of the Eighth District Bank in St. Louis, have been essential to the writing of this book. I am indebted to Thomas Melzer, president of the St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank, for his sponsorship and friendly support; to the Bank's librarian, Carol Thaxton, for her friendly assistance; and to Ruth Bryant, vice president of the Bank, who gave freely of her time and energy throughout the preparation of the manuscript. I am grateful to Vice President Bryant for assembling the illustrations and photographs which accompany the text. Finally, I want to express my appreciation to Garland Russell, that urbane gentleman whose penetrating questions and observations on the initial draft led to significant improvements in the manuscript. Errors in fact and interpretation, if there are any, are my sole responsibility.

James Neal Primm
St. Louis, June 1989

Acknowledgment to the Electronic Edition

A Foregone Conclusion was produced by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis in 1989 to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the Federal Reserve Act. This electronic version has been produced by the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis to encourage broader circulation of the volume, now out of print. Unfortunately, all of the original materials for the book (including the text, photo boards, etc.) were discarded after its publication. The text was recovered via optical character recognition from scanned images of the printed pages. The printed volume contained one signature of photos in the center. These also were scanned and I wish to thank my colleague David Reed for improving the quality of the photos. We have included with each photo the text, albeit brief, as it is in the printed volume. I also wish to thank Richard Anderson for suggesting the production of this electronic version, and providing the resources for its completion.